$1 a Day Folks - That's All It Would Take

The house has finally come out with a bill for health care reform. In this house version, they state coverage for about 96% of Americans and serious and much needed oversite and limitations on the health insurance companies. While it is not everything I'd hoped for, it certainly is a start. The bill in the senate, however, is looking much less friendly to the people. Now these bills go up for vote and we still hear that there may not be enough votes to enact a real change. We also must wonder what will happen when the final bill is written. What will it actually contain? Which factions will come out on top? The insurance industry lobbyists seem to have a firm hold on many in both senate and congress.

While Nancy Pelosi has said that this is an historic moment in this country regarding the Health Care Reform Bill that the house has made public, and I must admit a lot of what they have in that bill is real change, I'm not finding it a great historical moment for us - yet. I am still highly disappointed in our lawmakers regardless of which party they claim. I am angry at the rhetoric and lies that are being passed off as fact. When we could solve this problem with $1 a day. How's that? Well, let me explain.

You see, if everyone in the country paid $1 per person per day for health care then everyone would have health care they could afford and everyone would be covered and there would be no cries of "how do we afford it" and "it will create a huge deficit". So here's the plan.

$1 per day per person comes to $365 per year per person. Now hang on 'cause I'm gonna throw out some big numbers here. We have approximately 300 million people in this country. So let's multiply $365 x 300,000,000 = $109,500,000,000 per year. That is 109.5 billion dollars people. Staggering isn't it. Even if you factor in those who cannot afford their $1 per day, we come out well over a 100 billion dollars per year for health care. Over a 10 year period that is over 100 trillion dollars. That is more than sufficient to cover the medical needs of everyone in the country and assure that the health care providers are still paid well enough to compensate for their expenses and salaries.

Let me break that down a little more. For a family of 4 that would be $1,460 per year for health coverage. No worrying about pre-existing conditions, denial of coverage or claims, co-pays and all the other disclaimers that the insurance companies throw out to keep you from getting the health care you need. This is affordable for everyone! It is simple! It does not put our country in debt.

There will be the naysayers out there that tell me that I am making it too simple and that it's just more complicated than that. Is it really? Or do they just make it appear that way hoping to baffle us with BS and toss out numbers so large that our brains rebel at the sound of them so that we will not pay attention or we will give up the fight in our BS induced stupor. No, it really can be that simple. Yes, it would be a single payer system and yes, there would be work in setting it up and implementing and maintaining; but what the hell are these lawmakers up there for if not to work. It is time they started working for the people of this country and not the special interest groups that line their pockets.

I'm gonna take it one step further and suggest that these same lawmakers who can't seem to put together a workable, equitable bill that actually benefits everyone without putting this country further into debt should not have their cushy government sponsored health care coverage but have to be out here with the rest of us at the mercy of the insurance industry. Perhaps if they had to live with what they want to subject us to they would be more inclined to put together real, meaningful health care reform.

Now, I've heard a lot of garbage about single payer from just about every group of people and largely I hear 2 things. Yes, we as a country want single payer and we don't want it because that would make us like Canada or Europe. For those of you enlightened enough to realize that single payer would be the great equalizer of health care - kudos. For those of you who don't want us to be like Canada or Europe in terms of health care - why not? It seems to be working really well for them and the people. Are we such a great and evolved country that we can't learn anything from our neighboring countries? Would a single payer system somehow denigrate our status as a nation? Are we so arrogant that we are willing to sacrifice 40,000 lives every year just so we can say "we're America - we don't have to have socialized medicine". By the way, those 40,000 lives are the number of people who die in this country every year because they don't have health care insurance.

Yes, it may be hard to believe but we could make a truly historic change in this country on just $1 a day.

Lastly, it is time that we had some backbone in this country. It is time to take a stand against dirty politicians taking money from corporations and leaving the rest of us in financial ruin. It is time that we say NO to making laws that make those same corporations billions of dollars every year out of our blood, sweat and tears. It is time for a change. It is time for each and every one of us to speak out and speak up any way we can and let our "elected" officials know that they work for us and they not doing a very good job. In the real world, when you screw up that bad, you no longer have a job - maybe they shouldn't either.